lduke12
New member
I gave a wave tonight, but this will be my main thread for anytime i add to my "GeoCon" Jeep.
To start as you can see in my profile im from Bakersfield California, I work for Chevron out in the oilfields along the Kern River supervising a team of heathen's who design and draw up all the blueprints to build all the facilities needed to produce that beautiful crude that keeps Merica driving (for the moment). Been married for 7 years, we have a 4 year old son who is the most awesome dude ever and my wife's tiny little dog who looks like Toto from the wizard of Oz.
Now on to the important stuff my Jeep.
First pic is how it looked when i bought her from the dealer sometime in September of 2013.
We drove her around for a little while having fun staring at all the locals with awesome modifications to their jeeps which started giving me the bug to modify but first took her to Pismo to have a little fun on the beach in her stock form.
Then the first mod came. Bought and installed a nice billet aluminum grab bar for the passenger side.
Then purchased a cb, with antenna and wiring and got it installed using the write up on Project JK. (Sorry my garage was a mess back then.)
Then finally pulled the trigger and ordered my Rock Krawler 3.5 Max Travel kit, with Bilstein 5100 shocks all the way around from Northridge 4x4 because this Jeep was experiencing the WOD very badly. Pic below is my 4 year old discovering the brown santa drop off the week of Christmas 2013.
Started opening all the boxes and reading through everything and found out there was some welding involved in the installation process for the lift and decided to take the Jeep and kit to a local shop that all the local Jeep clubs in town recommended, also had them install front axle tubes and C gussets. They had her the whole week of New Years doing the install but called and said she was done. So right before New Years weekend we went and picked her up from the shop on a Thursday night with plans to take her back to Pismo. This pic is how she looked when i got her home still using the stock rims and tires.
The very next morning i had to run some errands across town hopped in GeoCon and started on my way. Once on the other side of town i started to notice a really bad burning smell coming from the Jeep and couldn't figure out where it was coming from. I parked in the closest parking lot i could find and got out and did a walk around the Jeep. Once i got to the rear of the vehicle i noticed a ton of white ash looking substance all over the rear of my Jeep and started looking for where it was coming from. Crawled underneath in the parking lot and discovered that the rear passenger stock tire was directly rubbing the new rear Rock Krawler upper control arm, so the white ash substance was the nice coating on the control arm being burned off by the tire. Luckily there was a tire shop right across the street so i drove over there to ask if they could tell why it was happening. Low and behold i needed new rims with a better offset to get the tire away from the control arms. So i walked out with 4 brand new 16" rims sitting on 35" tires.
Once the rims and tires were put on me and the fam decided to take a nice weekend trip back to Pismo for some fun in out in the dunes on our newly lifted and shoed Jeep. Turned out looking pretty good and we tore the dunes up that day.
Week after returning home from the 2 hour drive from Pismo my steering wheel light starts to come on in the dash. So driving on the freeway i tested the straightness of the steering wheel to driving straight and found out my steering wheel was "Very" dramatically off. One of my employees is a member on here and has a nice Rubicon he wheels and went out to the parking lot at work and took a look at it, the front steering drag link was completely loose where we could rotate the whole thing on either side by hand. Friend says bring over to the house tonight and we can tighten it real quick. He lives close to work so i took it there to do it after work that day. We crawl up underneath to start tightening it and come to find out the entire suspension was installed incorrectly. Every control arm locking nut was loose, the grease fittings were installed facing directly down so if i had wheeled it over some rocks would have sheared them clean off the brand new control arms, the rear trackbar was not correctly installed over the rear axle, the rear control arms were installed so that the upper ones arch bowed outwards from the Jeep instead of up and down which is why they rubbed on the stock tires. So long story short that night in the guys garage we pretty much had to remove all 4 control arms and check the lengths, tighten everything down properly and get it all back in there so that it was at least safe to drive. Then when putting the passenger front control arms back in, we turn and notice this.
Yeah, someone either didn't tighten the bolts back, or completely forgot to put them back in after doing the axle tube and c gusset install. When we travelled to Pismo it could have fallen out but basically it wasn't properly put back and the caliper was jumping out of the brackets and getting wedged in-between my brand new rim and cut a really nice deep groove into it. I was pretty upset as you can imagine i just could have killed me, my wife and 4 year old trying to have a nice weekend at the beach.
When all was put back to satisfaction of being road worthy i took the Jeep back to the shop that did the work and showed them everything that was done incorrectly. I wasn't a jerk about it, and they were very apologetic about the whole situation and actually did me right by replacing all parts that were damaged free of charge, as well as gave me some free maintenance stuff for quite a long time with going through the Jeep with me to ensure all nuts and bolts were installed and tightened correctly and marked with the movement indicating stuff. Cant think of the name its late right now writing this lol.
Sine the lift, rims and tires, i have installed the AEM CAI and spacer along with the MBRP Off-Road exhaust which sounds pretty good, and a week or two ago i went down to LA and purchased the rear bumper and tire carrier from Irish JK but have yet to install it. Once its on i will take pics and post. Otherwise i will be posting more photos of upgrades to come on this thread. The next mod is definitely going to be new gearing though because since the 35's went on GeoCon is a huge gutless wonder.
Took the front doors off to go Geocaching the Carrizo Plains
In case anyone is into it this is my other project that has been many years in progress but love this machine.
1973 Mustang Mach 1 all original numbers matching so fun to cruise. Have been working on a 521 stroker engine for this car as well that will hopefully be ready to install into the car within the next year or so, or should i find a way to get it into the Jeep lol.
To start as you can see in my profile im from Bakersfield California, I work for Chevron out in the oilfields along the Kern River supervising a team of heathen's who design and draw up all the blueprints to build all the facilities needed to produce that beautiful crude that keeps Merica driving (for the moment). Been married for 7 years, we have a 4 year old son who is the most awesome dude ever and my wife's tiny little dog who looks like Toto from the wizard of Oz.
Now on to the important stuff my Jeep.
First pic is how it looked when i bought her from the dealer sometime in September of 2013.
We drove her around for a little while having fun staring at all the locals with awesome modifications to their jeeps which started giving me the bug to modify but first took her to Pismo to have a little fun on the beach in her stock form.
Then the first mod came. Bought and installed a nice billet aluminum grab bar for the passenger side.
Then purchased a cb, with antenna and wiring and got it installed using the write up on Project JK. (Sorry my garage was a mess back then.)
Then finally pulled the trigger and ordered my Rock Krawler 3.5 Max Travel kit, with Bilstein 5100 shocks all the way around from Northridge 4x4 because this Jeep was experiencing the WOD very badly. Pic below is my 4 year old discovering the brown santa drop off the week of Christmas 2013.
Started opening all the boxes and reading through everything and found out there was some welding involved in the installation process for the lift and decided to take the Jeep and kit to a local shop that all the local Jeep clubs in town recommended, also had them install front axle tubes and C gussets. They had her the whole week of New Years doing the install but called and said she was done. So right before New Years weekend we went and picked her up from the shop on a Thursday night with plans to take her back to Pismo. This pic is how she looked when i got her home still using the stock rims and tires.
The very next morning i had to run some errands across town hopped in GeoCon and started on my way. Once on the other side of town i started to notice a really bad burning smell coming from the Jeep and couldn't figure out where it was coming from. I parked in the closest parking lot i could find and got out and did a walk around the Jeep. Once i got to the rear of the vehicle i noticed a ton of white ash looking substance all over the rear of my Jeep and started looking for where it was coming from. Crawled underneath in the parking lot and discovered that the rear passenger stock tire was directly rubbing the new rear Rock Krawler upper control arm, so the white ash substance was the nice coating on the control arm being burned off by the tire. Luckily there was a tire shop right across the street so i drove over there to ask if they could tell why it was happening. Low and behold i needed new rims with a better offset to get the tire away from the control arms. So i walked out with 4 brand new 16" rims sitting on 35" tires.
Once the rims and tires were put on me and the fam decided to take a nice weekend trip back to Pismo for some fun in out in the dunes on our newly lifted and shoed Jeep. Turned out looking pretty good and we tore the dunes up that day.
Week after returning home from the 2 hour drive from Pismo my steering wheel light starts to come on in the dash. So driving on the freeway i tested the straightness of the steering wheel to driving straight and found out my steering wheel was "Very" dramatically off. One of my employees is a member on here and has a nice Rubicon he wheels and went out to the parking lot at work and took a look at it, the front steering drag link was completely loose where we could rotate the whole thing on either side by hand. Friend says bring over to the house tonight and we can tighten it real quick. He lives close to work so i took it there to do it after work that day. We crawl up underneath to start tightening it and come to find out the entire suspension was installed incorrectly. Every control arm locking nut was loose, the grease fittings were installed facing directly down so if i had wheeled it over some rocks would have sheared them clean off the brand new control arms, the rear trackbar was not correctly installed over the rear axle, the rear control arms were installed so that the upper ones arch bowed outwards from the Jeep instead of up and down which is why they rubbed on the stock tires. So long story short that night in the guys garage we pretty much had to remove all 4 control arms and check the lengths, tighten everything down properly and get it all back in there so that it was at least safe to drive. Then when putting the passenger front control arms back in, we turn and notice this.
Yeah, someone either didn't tighten the bolts back, or completely forgot to put them back in after doing the axle tube and c gusset install. When we travelled to Pismo it could have fallen out but basically it wasn't properly put back and the caliper was jumping out of the brackets and getting wedged in-between my brand new rim and cut a really nice deep groove into it. I was pretty upset as you can imagine i just could have killed me, my wife and 4 year old trying to have a nice weekend at the beach.
When all was put back to satisfaction of being road worthy i took the Jeep back to the shop that did the work and showed them everything that was done incorrectly. I wasn't a jerk about it, and they were very apologetic about the whole situation and actually did me right by replacing all parts that were damaged free of charge, as well as gave me some free maintenance stuff for quite a long time with going through the Jeep with me to ensure all nuts and bolts were installed and tightened correctly and marked with the movement indicating stuff. Cant think of the name its late right now writing this lol.
Sine the lift, rims and tires, i have installed the AEM CAI and spacer along with the MBRP Off-Road exhaust which sounds pretty good, and a week or two ago i went down to LA and purchased the rear bumper and tire carrier from Irish JK but have yet to install it. Once its on i will take pics and post. Otherwise i will be posting more photos of upgrades to come on this thread. The next mod is definitely going to be new gearing though because since the 35's went on GeoCon is a huge gutless wonder.
Took the front doors off to go Geocaching the Carrizo Plains
In case anyone is into it this is my other project that has been many years in progress but love this machine.
1973 Mustang Mach 1 all original numbers matching so fun to cruise. Have been working on a 521 stroker engine for this car as well that will hopefully be ready to install into the car within the next year or so, or should i find a way to get it into the Jeep lol.
, but atleast they came good and did the right thing.
